The life and love of a cat named Jon Snow (05/07/2016 - 09/12/2025)
Content Warning: This post deals heavily with the loss of a beloved pet and friend; please take care of yourself if you choose to read.
Early this morning, after a lengthy battle with heart disease our dear cat friend Jon Snow succumbed to a stroke and passed away in our arms.
I'm pretty fucking devastated right now.
It was sudden, it was fast and painless (for him) and I'm kinda lost so I wanted to share some the final photos I took of him over the last few weeks.
Della packing up a box of old clothes that he decided to make his bed
Last year he had a blood clot lodge in his hindquarters leaving him temporarily unable to walk and spurring a trip to an emergency vet; I wrote about it extensively here and that blog post honestly tells a good story about the cat himself from when we met him as a tiny feral kitten; I don't really want to rehash because when I was writing that post initially, I thought we were saying goodbye to him and it feels more poetic than what I've got in me right now.
Miraculously, he fully regained control of his legs in their care but the major issue was that his previous vets over the years had not discovered he had a heart disorder and was now in active heart failure. Even if we did everything right and managed his condition with medications, we were likely looking at a “he does not have much time left”. Keeping in mind, as this was going on, his brother Sparkle was also dying of cancer. We took the chance and brought him home instead of putting him down then and there because he was back up and about, running, playing and purring. This was October of 2024.
Bed snuggles
Religiously twice a day I started giving him heart medications, potassium supplements and blood thinners, all ground up into a gross-ass powder that was then liquefied and administered via mouth syringe because this guy did not trust pill pockets at ALL lmfao.
He made what more or less accounted to a full recovery in a very short period of time though and I gotta tell you, when he’d be zooming around the house, chasing a string, being jealous another cat is near Della, or playing hair tie (A game he invented and taught us how to play: we hold a hair tie slightly above his head level and he smacks it down to the ground and encourages us to do it again) it was really fucking hard to remember he was sick.
He’d have a few days here and there where his breathing was more ragged, but it would resolve after rest. Trips to the vet were always the biggest stressors and he’d have 1-2 days of recovering from that before he’d be back to normal - but out of nowhere last night he just hit a wall.
A wall we knew was always inevitable, but it took so long to reach it felt incomprehensible.
He wanted to sleep on the printer but it was occupied so he settled for the desk
I don’t even know what to say. I’m so fucking devastated right now. He was such a loving dude to us and kind of a surrogate dad to a lot of the other cats.
The last two photos I took of him; 9/11/2025 - sleeping half on the iPad (texture needs!) and then getting some chest (NEVER BELLY) scritches from Della
Taking him home was the right call because if we'd put him down at the EV we'd have missed almost an entire year of cuddles with him. He had down days, sure - but they massively were outweighed by the good ones and he was really responding to the medication in ways that surprised everyone given how dire he was.
I'm going to miss him more than I can express and I'm so mad that his sister Bison is gonna have to realize at some point that he's gone. One of her roles as littermate was after he got sick to stand near him as he slept and yell-meow at us to pay attention to him because she knew something wasn't right. All morning she's been looking around the house for him and I'm not keeping it together.
Gonna go cuddle Bison and try to not be a mess.